REINVENTING INDENTURED SERVITUDE? Inside Higher Ed has a roundup of gubernatorial campaign promises that involve higher education. Midwestern politicians cannot get their brains around the idea that graduates of Big Ten universities competing in the global economy by relocating elsewhere on the globe attest to the strength of those universities.

In what has been the most expensive election in [Iowa’s] history, and one in which the incumbent, Gov. Tom Vilsack, a Democrat, decided not to seek re-election, many see this as a truly wide open race. Each candidate’s higher education proposal indicates that keeping top high school students and college graduates in the state is a priority.

“Brain drain has been a problem here, and Vilsack hasn’t had success in addressing this,” Merritt said.

The “Iowans Learn & Earn College Program” proposed by U.S. Rep. Jim Nussle, a Republican, takes aim at low- and moderate-income students who are planning to remain in the state. Eligible students who attend an Iowa institution sign a contract promising to work in Iowa for at least seven years after graduation. During that time, the state would pay the students back for loans they took out.

“Many states in the Midwest find that kids go to school and want to go off to big cities,” said Pete Jeffries, senior counsel to the Nussle campaign. “This way, they become taxpayers, and the program eventually pays for itself.”

I suppose it would be too retrograde for Iowa to send recruiters to the Third World with scholarships in one hand and binders to Iowa employers in the other. We may be grateful that there are no proposals to fence the northern border with an Anti-Gopher Protective Wall to keep Iowa students from succumbing to filthy lures from the North.

Another proposal, also in Iowa, to enable high school students to enroll concurrently in senior year and in college, looks more promising.

The Iowans might not have to put that fence along the Mississippi River, because some Wisconsin politicians will beat them to it.

It’s not so much brain drain as outsider entry that has U.S. Rep. Mark Green, the Republican candidate, riled up in the race for the Wisconsin statehouse. As the University of Wisconsin at Madison has become more and more appealing to students from across the country, admission there has grown more competitive for in-state students — too competitive, Green says.

“Wisconsin kids should be at the front of the line, and Mark Green will make sure that happens,” said Luke Punzenberger, a spokesman for the campaign.

Margaret Lewis, associate vice president for government relations in the University of Wisconsin System, said the issue is sticky because out-of-state tuition, which was as much as four times that of in-state fees a few years back, was lowered at the same time that gradual increases were made to in-state costs.

Lewis said non-resident tuition had skyrocketed so much that the UW System’s non-Madison campuses were missing out on millions of dollars of revenue from out-of-state students who stayed away because of costs.

“It’s great that both candidates seem to be talking about access and affordability,” Lewis said. “We’ve traditionally been a low-tuition, low-aid state, but tuition has crept up as there has been a reduction in state support for the university system.”

The literary types have this expression, "presence of the absence." Here, I see no suggestion that perhaps there is excess demand for the flagship campus at Madison, and that the other campuses of the Wisconsin system could compete for those out-of-state dollars by, oh, becoming more selective, or hiring more potential Nobel Prize winners for their faculties.